4.8 Procedure of Constitutional Bench

The Constitutional Bench — Art 137: the Chief Justice + four justices. Its docket: (i) petitions under Art 133(1) (the any-citizen voidness petitions — laws inconsistent with the Constitution or the federal order); (ii) jurisdiction disputes (federation-province, province-province, province- local, local-local); (iii) federal/provincial election disputes and members' ineligibility; (iv) the serious constitutional questions the CJ allocates to it. Procedure: by the SC's rules — the petition's filing (the constitutional registry's route), the Bench's constitution, the parties and the amicus (the constitutional bar's participation), the hearing (often in batches for connected questions), and the decision (the law's validity upheld/voided — void ab initio or from the decision's date, the Art 133(1) choices; the disputes' answers). The Constitutional Bench's decisions stand at the pyramid's constitutional apex (with the full Court's review face in the rarest cases); the ordinary benches continue the law's daily interpretation (Art 128).